


Up the Wolves

by saltandrockets



Series: I Don't Want Love [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hux is a bad person but a good dad, Skywalker Family Drama, evil space dads, kylo has no chill, possibly the weirdest night in Rey's life, the continuing adventures of the galaxy's most dysfunctional family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simultaneously, Hux lowers his blaster and Rey deactivates her lightsaber. He holsters his weapon, and she mirrors him, clipping the saber to her belt again. Some of the tension bleeds out of the air, but not much. </p><p>“Well,” Hux says at last, with a sigh. “As long as you’re here, you might as well come up for a drink.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up the Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t believe we’re already on part 4! thanks for sticking with me for so long. (if you haven’t read [the previous installments of this series,](http://archiveofourown.org/series/490429) this story won’t make a lick of sense.)

_there's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet / no matter where you live_  
_there'll always be a few things, maybe several things / that you're gonna find really difficult to forgive_  
— [“Up the Wolves,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agbCspmBSWk) The Mountain Goats

\--

The cantina is packed, full of noisy chatter and the mingled scents of smoke and strange liquor. Rain pounds on the roof, a steady drumming that Rey can sense through the Force more than she can actually hear. She’s perched on a stool near the end of the bar, slouching a little for effect, one eye skimming the crowd. On any world, the local watering hole is usually the best place to mine for information, and Pacifica 9 is no exception.

“Top you off?” the bartender asks, indicating Rey’s empty glass. She’s an alien—maybe seven feet tall, with an elongated face and leathery brown skin that hangs loosely on her frame. Kem Wa’lai is her name, or so Rey has heard. She’s the proprietor of this establishment.

Rey shrugs. “Might as well.”

“Don’t get many humans around these parts,” Kem says, pouring a measure of Corellian whiskey into the glass. In unfamiliar cantinas, Rey generally opts for a familiar drink—nothing too adventurous. “Maybe the atmosphere doesn’t agree with them.”

“I’m just passing through.”

Kem snorts. “The last humans who told me they were _just passing through_ ended up sticking around for—” She considers for a moment. “Oh, going on fifteen years now.”

“Is that so?” Applying a gentle pressure to the forefront of Kem’s mind, Rey glimpses a grainy memory, faded with age: a pair of humans standing at the bar, seen from Kem’s perspective. One of them is holding a baby. Interesting. “Why’d they decide to hang around?”

“Couldn’t say. Got tired of traveling, maybe—some folks do. They run the garage south of the port these days.”

Rey hums thoughtfully. “I’ve got a busted speeder that needs looking at,” she says. “Are they reliable?”

“They’re good enough for me.” Kem says it lightly, but Rey gets the sense that her standards are high indeed. “Not just with speeders, either. When my generator was on the fritz again, Niall got it humming in no time. He’s clever, for a human. No offense.”

“None taken.” Slipping from seat to seat in the noisy cantina over the last couple of hours, Rey’s collected a number of anecdotes about the human mechanics of Pacifica 9. A mind trick gets the bar patrons chatty, and another one makes them forget all about her the instant she leaves their sight.

She’s heard that the mechanics repair droids for their neighbors and charge practically nothing. She’s heard that they’ve been regular customers at the exotic fruit stand for ten years. All that, and yet nobody seems to know where they came from before they landed here. It’s as if they appeared out of thin air.

By all accounts, the mechanics are ordinary folk who mind their own business. Quiet. A bit odd, perhaps, but any eccentricities are dismissed as harmless, and attributed to their species.

Rey knows better. She’s spent the last eight months combing the galaxy for those two. Each time she thought she’d caught the scent, it turned out to be somebody else. Just when she was beginning to wonder if it was a lost cause, she thinks she’s finally got them pinned, here on this little green moon at the edge of habitable space.

Maybe it was inevitable that she should make it here. In a way, she feels as if she’s been moving inexorably toward this point for the last fourteen years.

“You’re not going to remember me once I leave,” Rey says.

“I’m not going to remember you once you leave,” Kem repeats, a bit woodenly. At Rey’s mental nudging, her attention slides to the other patrons sitting along the bar.

Rising, Rey leaves a few credit chips on the polished wooden bar, beside her glass. Then she crosses the barroom, weaving expertly around packed tables and tipsy aliens alike, and slips out into the rainy night.

 

\--

 

“So you really think this is the right place?” Finn asks. His hologram, which shows him from the shoulders up, is blue-tinted and wavering slightly from the spotty connection. It must be late on Yavin 4, the rest of the family probably in bed, but Finn hasn’t missed a single comm from Rey since she departed on this mission. The hour doesn’t matter, he always says, since he wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing that she’s safe.

“All signs point to yes,” Rey tells him. She’s slumped on the lounge seat in the _Falcon_ _’s_ communal area; the hologram is the only source of light. Outside, rain pelts the hull like blaster fire. “But we’ll find out for sure tomorrow.”

“I just wish you would’ve let me come with you. I would’ve gone in a heartbeat.”

Rey smiles. Even now, all these years later, Finn wouldn’t hesitate to march into battle by her side. “I know you would. And there’s no one I’d rather have with me. But I couldn’t take you away from the kids for so long.”

Over the last decade, Finn and Poe have adopted a pack of children—six so far, between the ages of eight and nineteen. Whatever they claim, Rey is not entirely convinced that they’re done having children. The most recent addition to the family, Gallim, is a scrawny sixteen-year-old orphan with a blind eye and a touch of Force sensitivity who had attempted to pick Finn’s pocket. Instead of turning him in to the local police, Finn treated the boy to a meal and a long conversation. Within a few weeks, Gallim was a Dameron.

“Speaking of the kids,” Finn says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, “they miss you. Wileen’s always asking when you’re coming back.”

“Soon,” Rey assures him. “I really think this is the place.”

“That’s half the problem. I don’t like the idea of you being out there with no backup.”

“I won’t be in any danger.” She sincerely hopes so, anyway. No matter what she tells Finn, they both know that there’s no anticipating how the last stage of this mission will unfold. “And I’ll update you the moment I’ve got it taken care of.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Rey.”

“Aren’t I always?” Rey asks, grinning, but her smile falters when she notices Finn’s grim expression. “Oh, all right. I’ll be extra careful—just for you.”

That earns her a small smile. “I’ll hold you to it. May the Force be with you,” Finn says, and ends the transmission.

When the hologram goes dark, Rey lets out a slow breath and sinks back against the seat. Even the Force, she thinks, might not be enough to get her through this.

 

\--

 

By the following night, the heavy rain has lessened to a sullen drizzle. Streetlamps are coming on as Rey reaches the garage, hazy blue-green halos shrouded in the rain. She slips in through the front door, which is unlocked. Open for business, apparently.

Inside, the place is bright and clean, not quite what she’s come to expect from Outer Rim garages. Almost all of the bays are full—speeders, mostly, in various states of repair and disrepair. Near the back, a human girl crouches on the duracrete, bent over a hoverboard. Tools are scattered around her, and a pair of goggles shield her eyes. She’s skinny and coltish, maybe fourteen, wearing grease-stained coveralls that are too big for her.

As Rey approaches, the girl looks up sharply. She shoves the goggles up onto her forehead with one grimy hand, revealing large, dark eyes. Her face is not pretty, but it’s striking: angular jaw, high cheekbones and prominent nose, a smattering of brownish freckles. Her dark hair is shaved along the sides, but the rest is very long, bound back into a looping braid. She watches Rey with an odd wariness—not accustomed to close contact with strangers, perhaps. Or maybe it’s something else.

“I’m looking for a mechanic,” Rey says, by way of greeting. “Busted speeder. I think it’s the hydraulics, but I’m not sure.”

Instantly, the girl perks up, rising to her feet. She’s tall for such a young girl, her eyes already level with Rey’s. And she’s Force-sensitive—that much is obvious. She’s practically glowing with it. “Well, you’re in the right place. My dads can fix anything, between the two of them.”

“Your dads? Are they the mechanics I heard about?”

“Mm-hmm.” There’s a hint of pride in the girl’s voice.

“What’s your name?”

“Shmi.”

Rey’s a little taken aback by the name, but she doesn’t let it show. Instead, she edges closer, peering down at the hoverboard. It’s got an interestingly-shaped fin—nonstandard, definitely. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a board like this. What model is it?”

“Used to be a Flex-A39,” Shmi says. She rubs at her nose with one hand, smearing grease on her face without seeming to notice. “But with all the mods, it probably barely counts as one anymore.”

“Did you modify it yourself?” Rey crouches to get a closer look, her coat shifting around her as she moves.

Shmi’s dark eyes catch on Rey’s belt, on the deactivated lightsaber hanging there, and her whole body goes rigid. “I know what you are,” she says suddenly, in a low voice. Rey can sense the girl’s pulse kick up, hard and fast. “If you want to live, you’ll get the hell away from here before my dad catches you.”

“Hold on.” Rey straightens slowly, her hands raised in a placating gesture. “I don’t know what you think I’m—”

She stops short when a side door bursts open, at the edge of her peripheral vision. She whirls around—

And there he is.

Rey almost doesn’t recognize him, despite the humming certainty of the Force. All these years, he has existed in her mind as he was the last time she saw him, through the surveillance feed in his cell on that old Resistance base. It’s a shock to be confronted with him now, changed in a hundred tiny ways that amount to something much greater. He is undeniably aged, somewhat heavier than he used to be, coppery hair shot through with silver, deep lines worn around his pale eyes. He’s dressed like a mechanic, his coveralls old but well-maintained.

General Hux’s hand flashes to the blaster at his hip at the same moment that Rey reaches for her lightsaber. By the time she’s raised her blade, the weapon pulsing in her hand like a living thing, the barrel of the blaster is trained on her head. His face is hard, and his eyes are harder. The hand holding the blaster is steady.

For a long moment, the two of them stand locked in a stalemate, just a few feet of empty duracrete between them. Rey could knock the blaster out of Hux’s hand with the Force, but it’s possible that he might get a shot in anyway, and it’s possible that she won’t successfully deflect it. If Rey has learned anything over these long years, it’s that there’s no such thing as certainty. And then there’s the girl, Shmi. She’s an unknown element.

The door Hux just came through creaks open again.

A little girl stands in the doorway. She can’t be older than nine or ten, her face still slightly round with puppy fat. Her thick dark hair is braided back, elaborately; someone else must’ve done that for her. “Daddy,” she says questioningly, looking from Hux to Rey and back again. Her eyes are huge and blue. “I felt something weird.”

“She’s yours, too?” Rey asks in disbelief, though part of her already knows the answer. She can feel it, through the Force, the way it ripples around the little one, the same way it does around Shmi. “The both of yours?”

Hux’s expression doesn’t change, nor does his aim waver, but Rey can sense the slamming of his pulse. “Let’s not do this in front of the children.”

“What do you think I’m here to do?”

Again, he doesn’t answer. Without taking his eyes off Rey, he says, “Shmi, take your sister back upstairs.”

“But, Daddy, I can—” Shmi tries, a note of panic in her voice.

“Do as I say.” Hux’s voice is sharper now.

Shmi grimaces, seeming to wrestle inwardly with the command. In the end, she rushes across the garage, giving Hux and Rey a wide berth. She shushes her sister’s protests and herds her back through the door.

Rey can see the blue light of her saber dancing uneasily in Hux’s eyes, casting strange shadows across his face. Distantly, she wonders what she looks like to him. The last time they laid eyes on each other was in the middle of the war, when Rey was twenty years old and unsure of her own power. Now she’s almost thirty-six, a grown woman, a Jedi master. She can’t imagine what’s going through his head now.

“I’ll count to three,” Hux says at last. “And on three, we’ll both lower our weapons.”

Rey pauses. She reaches out with the Force, searching for deception—but as far as she can tell, he’s making the suggestion in good faith. “All right,” she says. “But I want to count.” 

His brow crinkles, but he nods. “Very well.”

“On three,” Rey says slowly. “One… two… three.”

Simultaneously, Hux lowers his blaster and Rey deactivates her lightsaber. He holsters his weapon, and she mirrors him, clipping the saber to her belt again. Some of the tension bleeds out of the air, but not much.

For another minute, they stand there uncomfortably, silence stretching between them.

“Well,” Hux says at last, with a sigh. “As long as you’re here, you might as well come up for a drink.”

 

\--

 

Hux’s invitation is absolutely bizarre—and yet, somehow, accepting it seems like the only appropriate thing to do at this point.

Ultimately, Rey follows him outside, around to the back of the garage, where a narrow stairwell leads to a silent apartment. As she steps inside, Hux closes the door behind her with a quiet click. The sitting room is modestly but tastefully furnished, full of low yellow light; it opens into the kitchen, which is tidy and clean, everything squared away. A wide window overlooks the wet street.

In the next room—a bedroom, presumably—Rey can sense the presence of both girls, behind the closed door. Eavesdropping, almost certainly. It’s what Rey would’ve done when she was their age.

While Hux busies himself at a cabinet, Rey drifts toward a low table, where a few holophotos are displayed. Each one is a silent moment captured, a few seconds repeating endlessly. There is Shmi, maybe ten or eleven, straddling an unusual blue speeder that looks custom-built. Kylo is seated behind her, unmasked, his big hand guiding hers over the gear shift. In another holo, Shmi looks no older than eight, playing on the floor with a chubby, dark-haired toddler—her sister.

Hux is the subject of the next holo. He’s propped up in bed, cradling a baby with a few wisps of fine dark hair that can only be the younger daughter. He looks up—past the holorecorder, to whoever is holding it, presumably Kylo—with an expression that’s at once annoyed and fond. The baby yawns. As the moment loops, Rey realizes this holo must’ve been taken shortly after the second baby was born.

In the oldest holo, Kylo and Hux stand close together. Shmi is a fussing baby in Hux’s arms. He’s focused on her, not on the holorecorder, and in turn, Kylo is looking only at Hux. He slides an arm around Hux’s waist, again and again, and each time, Hux glances up, their eyes meeting. Rey watches the moment flicker and repeat. It has the feel of a wedding holo, somehow, despite the absence of both rings and smiles. The background is grainy, but she recognizes the cantina she sat in last night.

“You were married in a bar?” Rey asks, curious despite herself.

“An invitation inside is not an invitation to snoop,” Hux says, somewhat irritably, looking over his shoulder at her. “And I’ll have you know, that cantina is considered a very respectable establishment. It practically doubles as a courthouse.” He sighs through his nose. “That’s the Outer Rim for you.”

It’s funny, almost, in a surreal sort of way. When Rey set out looking for Kylo and Hux, she wasn’t confident that she’d find them together. They didn’t seem like the kind of people who could actually commit to someone else long-term. She had never expected to find them married, much less with another child.

“The little one,” Rey says. “How old is she?”

“Nine. Her name is Delphine.”

“Another… surprise, I take it?” She doesn’t want to say _accident,_ not when the children are probably listening, their ears pressed to the bedroom door.

Hux’s mouth thins. “Planned,” he says, crisply.

Rey is poised to call his bluff—but, reaching out with the Force, she senses the truth in his words. They really did have the second baby on purpose. How utterly unexpected. “She looks more like you. She has your eyes.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that, just goes to the kitchen table with two glasses in one hand and a stout, amber-colored bottle in the other. She can’t read the label on the bottle; it’s printed in an unfamiliar language. Ice clinks in the glasses as he sets them down. Rey approaches the table, shrugging off her coat, but she doesn’t sit until Hux does. Even then, she does so warily, her whole body tensed and ready to react.

“Now,” Hux says, pouring some kind of dark liquor into one glass and sliding it across the table toward her. “This is the part where you tell me what you’re really doing here and what you want.”

For a moment, Rey doesn’t speak. She’s envisioned this moment a hundred times, but never anything like this. She feels off-balance, like she’ll topple over some unseen precipice if she makes a wrong move. “Leia is… unwell,” she says finally.

“She’s dying, is she? I’ll drink to that,” Hux says, and takes a swig from his own glass. “Finally, the old woman’s reign comes to an end.”

Rey sets her jaw, but refuses to rise to the bait. “I wouldn’t venture to guess how much time she has. But she’s had reason to consider her own mortality. Before she passes, she wants to know what became of her son and her granddaughter. She’s not well enough to travel far, so she asked me to find them. I’ve been combing the galaxy, and…” She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Well, here I am.”

“Here you are,” Hux echoes, plainly suspicious. “And you agreed to go on this wild bantha chase, just like that? What’s in it for you?”

In truth, Rey has never been totally at ease with this mission. It’s been fourteen years; the dust has settled, and it’s hard to imagine what good can come of dredging up Kylo Ren and General Hux—but Rey didn’t have it in her to deny Leia’s wish. Deep down, she knows they both need closure on this. “Nothing,” she says with a frown. “Leia is family. I don’t need an angle to do this for her.”

Hux gives her an appraising look. “She’s not the only family of yours involved in this,” he points out.

“Speaking of—where is he?”

“Kylo? Oh, he’ll be along. I don’t think I have to tell you that he won’t be pleased to come home to a burned building and a pile of corpses.”

“That sounds more your style,” Rey says, narrowing her eyes. “You certainly made more than your share, between the two of you.”

Hux shrugs imperiously. “All the same, you’ll pay a thousand times over for whatever you do here tonight.”

“I’ll remind you that I came here with no intention of harming anyone, however much they may deserve it. Keep that blaster tucked away and we’ll have no problems.” Rey finally takes a drink. The liquor is strong, burning pleasantly all the way down. “Besides, I would be surprised if he hasn’t sensed my presence on this moon already.”

“Ah. In which case, he may be racing home at this very moment,” Hux says easily. “Won’t that be interesting, when he walks in?”

Rey doesn’t doubt that, not for a moment. “I asked around at the cantina last night. It seems like you’ve got everyone fooled into thinking you’re ordinary folk.”

“Are they entirely wrong?” Hux asks, raising his eyebrows. “None of us are what we were fifteen years ago.”

The question fills Rey with a strange, inarticulate discomfort. She wonders if it’s really possible for someone to change their life so dramatically that they become a different person entirely. Luke would say yes—he’s told her many times of how Darth Vader embraced the light in his final moments and became Anakin Skywalker once again, redeemed of all his sins. But Rey has never witnessed such a transformation herself. It’s harder for her to believe.

“Do the children know?” she asks suddenly. “About who you are and what you’ve done?”

Hux scoffs. “Do you really think we’d make the same mistake that Kylo’s parents made with him?” he asks, leveling a reproachful look across the table. “They denied him access to his own heritage, his birthright, under the guise of protecting him from it. Really, they were only trying to protect themselves—and it backfired spectacularly.”

Fourteen years ago, Rey had expressed much the same thing to Leia. She’d argued that no good could come of sending Hux’s child away and keeping her in the dark about her origins. Their best bet was to keep her close, love her as best they could, teach her of their family’s difficult history so another generation wouldn’t be doomed to repeat it.

Rey never thought she would actually agree with Hux about anything, and certainly not something like this. “How much have you told them?”

“The girls know who Darth Vader is, and who Leia Organa is, and how those people are related to them. They know about Luke Skywalker, and about you, their Jedi cousin,” Hux informs her. “Delphine doesn’t quite understand what all of that really means yet, the weight of it—she’s not old enough. But Shmi does.”

“What about you?” Rey asks. “Does Shmi know that—”

“That I’m responsible for the destruction of the Hosnian System?” He says it with disturbing ease. “She knows.”

“She doesn’t really understand what that means, though.” If she did, Rey thinks, she probably wouldn’t be able to look her father in the face.

“Who could? Billions of lives—it’s unimaginable. It boggles the mind.” Hux takes another drink. “She knows what happened in the abstract, and why it was necessary. But she cannot comprehend the gravity of it. To her, it’s a number.”

“And what is it to you?”

He seems to consider his answer. “A waste.”

Rey’s eyebrows arch. Gingerly, she reaches out with the Force, seeking any traces of remorse. While she doesn’t sense any, she does pick up on echoes of sorrow and regret, both of which surprise her. “How so?”

“My weapon was designed to end billions of lives, vaporize entire cultures,” Hux says. “But weighed against the trillions of others across the galaxy, suffering under the chaos of the New Republic—” Even now, he spits those two words like poison. “It was a fair and equitable trade. Logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Rey recoils, as though burned. “You committed mass genocide! All those people you murdered—”

“A great and noble sacrifice,” he cuts across her. “The foundation of a system built to last. In the future, all those beings would’ve been celebrated as martyrs who gave their lives so the galaxy could be born again—”

“You’re foul,” Rey tells him, thickly. She picks up her glass and drains it in two swallows, in the hopes that the liquor will help get her through this conversation.

Hux is shaking his head. “That’s what the Resistance didn’t understand. You never grasped what the First Order was fighting for—what _I_ was fighting for. All that was destroyed would’ve been remade, perfectly this time—”

“But you lost Starkiller,” Rey says, her voice harsh, hoping that the memory of it still pains him, like a wound that never healed right. “And then you lost the war. You failed.”

“I did. Billions of lives, snuffed out for nothing.”

“Don’t play the victim. You escaped all punishment for what you did.”

“You’re the ones who stopped looking. What was the official word, again?”

Rey grabs the bottle and pours herself a generous measure. “That General Hux and Kylo Ren were killed near the end of the war—in separate incidences, of course. No discernible connection between them. And no bodies to recover, either. Convenient.” Glancing up, she adds, “I’m a little surprised you heard that news at all, out here in the ass-end of space.”

“We do get the HoloNet out here, you know,” he replies dryly. A moment passes, and then he refills his own glass, looking thoughtful. “I always wondered if those reports were a ploy—an attempt to get us to relax our guard.”

“No. We’d deprioritized the search even before that point. It was becoming a waste of resources, especially since it seemed like you’d gone to ground permanently.” Rey still remembers how Resistance command had argued over the issue, debates that sometimes lasted well into the night. “Any new leads that came to our attention were still pursued, though—rumors, alleged sightings, even the ones that didn’t seem promising.”

Hux raises his eyebrows. “Alleged sightings?”

“Oh, you know,” Rey says airily, with a wave of her hand. “Somebody claims they spotted General Hux working as a lounge singer in a cantina on Tatooine—that sort of thing.” He chokes a little on his drink, which serves him right. “You say you get the HoloNet. It’s a wonder you haven’t come across any of the conspiracy theories. Anyway, the leads were all worthless. Over time, we abandoned the search entirely.”

“At Organa’s urging, no doubt. That’s for Kylo’s benefit, of course, not mine,” Hux adds knowingly. “I’m an accessory to her sentimentality—a reprehensible creature who happened to give birth to her grandchildren. We’re tied together because of that. She must hate me for it—maybe even more for the children than the Hosnian System.” He huffs. “I’m sure she’ll be keen to hear about your little visit. She would love nothing more than to see me brought low.”

Rey arches her eyebrows. “Is that how you think of your life now?”

He pauses. “I didn’t say that.”

“You’ve been content here.”

“None of that,” Hux says, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Out of my head. It’s poor manners, especially considering you’re a guest in my home.”

“I don’t need to paw through your mind to know that much. You’ve been happy, with your family.” Rey narrows her eyes. “You don’t deserve it.”

He snorts. “Funny,” he says, swirling the liquor around the bottom of his glass. “I feel the same way.”

The strange thing is, Rey thinks he means it. “Why? You don’t believe you should’ve been punished for your crimes against the galaxy—”

“But I did deserve to answer for my catastrophic failures,” Hux says, enunciating clearly. His eyes are hard, suddenly. “As you said, I lost Starkiller, and then I lost the war. I never redeemed myself for that. I abandoned the cause, when I could’ve gone back. While the First Order crumbled and my fellow members of High Command were executed for war crimes, I was here, repairing speeders, raising my daughters.” He picks up his glass again and takes several swallows. Then he sets it down, shaking his head. “I escaped my fate. I haven’t forgotten that, not for a moment.”

They lapse into silence for a while, sipping dully at their drinks. Rey glances out at the sitting room, which looks tidy but lived-in. Hux probably runs a tight ship, but if she’s learned anything from the Damerons, it’s that messes are inevitable wherever children go. Sure enough, now that she’s looking for it, she notices some casual clutter—a couple of holobooks left out, a few toys abandoned on the rug, a blanket heaped on the end of the couch.

“You know,” Rey says, “when I was a little girl, I would’ve given anything for a life like this. A clean place to sleep, and enough to eat, and somebody who cared about me.”

He gives her an odd look. “Stars, but you Skywalkers set the bar low,” he mutters. “Is it really possible that Kylo is the first one of you who didn’t turn out to be an abysmal parent? You’d better not have any children, to be safe.”

She rankles a little at the comment—but, then again, her father abandoned her on a desert planet without her memories, ostensibly for her own safety. His own beloved mentor had once done the same to him. Maybe child abandonment really is a Skywalker family tradition. Rey takes another drink to fortify herself.

“The girls are Force sensitive,” she says, after a while. “I could feel it practically radiating off them.”

Hux makes a noncommittal noise.

“Are they being trained?”

“That’s Kylo’s realm,” Hux says, shaking his head. “I don’t meddle in it.”

Rey considers that. All these years, she’s worried that Hux and Kylo could be out there somewhere raising a new dark lord. Now that she’s here, it’s hard to guess what manner of people their daughters are growing up to be. “What are the girls like?”

“What do you mean?” He sounds suspicious.

She sighs through her nose. “I mean, describe their personalities. What do they enjoy? What are their aspirations? I want to know something about who you’re raising them to be.”

“So you can spill personal details to Organa, like a good little Resistance agent.”

“I could just speak to them,” Rey suggests. “Have a conversation, like people do.”

Hux glares. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“Then tell me about them. Or show me.” She lifts one hand and waggles her fingers suggestively.

Scoffing, he says, “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not keen to subject myself to your— _techniques_.”

“I wouldn’t harm you. And I wouldn’t look at anything you wanted to keep private. I’m not like Kylo.”

“Ah, there it is. That classic New Republican moral superiority. How I’ve missed it all these years,” Hux deadpans.

“Just tell me about them,” Rey says, exasperated. “It won’t kill you, will it?”

A long minute passes. Just when Rey is beginning to think she won’t get anything out of Hux after all, he says, “Shmi is very willful. And very capable—keen mind, quick on her feet. Easily frustrated, though.” He doesn’t quite look at Rey as he speaks. “She expects to be good at everything right away, and gets upset when she isn’t. She’ll make a big show of quitting whatever it is, but she always picks it back up again. When she actually commits herself to something, she’s relentless.”

“Sounds like she would’ve made a good Imperial,” Rey drawls.

“That goes without saying,” Hux replies coolly. “As it is, she’ll probably make a very fine pilot instead. It’s those Force-sensitive reflexes. I suppose you know all about that.”

“She likes flying?”

“She likes anything capable of dangerous speeds,” he says, taking a drink. “She’s almost killed herself on every speeder we have, in a number of creative ways. Kylo encourages her. I suspect they’re conspiring to give me a stroke.”

“And what about Delphine?”

“Delphine is…” Hux’s brow furrows as he seems to search for the words. “She feels things very deeply. Even things that have nothing to do with her. If Shmi cuts her finger, it’s Delphine who cries. Very strange. At first, I assumed it was another Force issue.”

“There’s a little thing called _empathy_ ,” Rey says with a frown. “You might’ve heard of it. Human feelings aren’t always mystical in origin—”

“A year ago,” he continues, ignoring her, “she found a dirty old cat behind a noodle shop and brought it home, begging to keep it. I hadn’t the heart the get rid of it, and neither did Kylo—so now we have a cat.” He shakes his head faintly. “Delphine remembers everything you tell her, in great detail, which means you have to be very careful about making promises. She’s clever with her hands. She asks about a hundred questions a day. ‘How does this work? Why is it built that way? What if we tried it like this instead?’ On and on.”

Despite his initial reluctance, Rey thinks, part of Hux relishes the opportunity to talk about his daughters like this. He’s proud of them; that much is obvious. Reaching out with the Force and skimming his uppermost thoughts, Rey can sense that he believes the girls are the best parts of him and of Kylo, and ultimately, better than both of them. Combined, Hux thinks, his girls could be an unstoppable war machine. But he also believes that will never happen. Rey is surprised to find him at ease with that thought.

A moment passes. Rey begins, “We should really discuss—”

She breaks off when the door crashes open. Rey’s whole body locks up as Kylo Ren crosses the threshold, one arm outstretched, lightsaber blazing in his other hand.

Kylo’s face is as pale and harsh and incongruous as ever, though thin lines have gathered at the corners of his eyes. The ruddy lightsaber scar across his face has softened somewhat, worn smoother by long years of healing. There are licks of gray in his dark hair, which he keeps shorter now. He is undiminished by age, however—enormous and imposing, the Force rippling around him in dark currents.

Powerful as he is, he can only hold her for an instant. Rey wrenches herself out of his invisible grip with a shout and surges to her feet, so fast that she knocks her chair backward; in a heartbeat, her lightsaber is alive in her hand. Instinctively, she swings it up to meet Kylo’s downward stroke.

Their blades lock, spitting blue and red sparks. Rey’s muscles strain with the effort as Kylo bears down on her, his eyes wild. Heat from the sabers washes over her face. She ducks, sliding out from under Kylo, and he overbalances, his lightsaber slicing the kitchen table in two. He recovers, whirls, pursues Rey out of the kitchen and into the sitting room.

“Kylo, that’s enough!” Hux is bellowing. “I had everything under control—”

Nobody acknowledges him. Kylo’s focus is purely on Rey. He knows this space better than she does, and he’s using it to his advantage—driving her backward, across the room, around the furniture, hacking at her so ferociously that it’s all she can do to hold him off.

When he tries to pin her against a table, she leaps up onto it, sending the holophotos tumbling to the floor. Suddenly, Rey has the high ground. Hux is still yelling, but she can barely hear him over the roar of blood in her ears. She sweeps her lightsaber down—

A thin scream comes from one of the bedrooms, breaking off sharply, just as the two blades crash together and lock again. Rey, Kylo and Hux all stop dead. For a second, the only sound is the humming and crackling of the lightsabers.

Hux is the first to react. He rushes to the bedroom door and hauls it open.

The girls are huddled together in the doorway, crouched on the floor and looking up at Hux in something like shock. Shmi has one arm wrapped around Delphine’s narrow shoulders; Delphine is cradling a big orange cat, its tail lashing back and forth.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Kylo deactivates his lightsaber—though he doesn’t put it away.

Rey does the same, dropping lightly down from the table, though she remains guarded, ready to ignite it again. Belatedly, she notices that the sitting room is practically in ruins, the evidence of her brief struggle with Kylo spelled out in broken furniture and a few glowing scorch marks along the wall. Some of the holophotos she knocked off the table are broken, scattered in pieces around her feet.

“It was so loud, Daddy,” Delphine says. Her eyes are wet with unshed tears. “My head—”

Based on the sensory feedback flowing off Delphine, Rey doesn’t think she means the shouting and crashing. A violent shift in the Force can feel like a sudden, dramatic change in air pressure, one that’s physically painful to those who possess a particularly delicate type of Force sensitivity. Just now, Delphine had likely cried out in pain, without meaning to.

Hux’s shoulders are taut. “You cannot be here,” he says to Shmi, through his teeth.

Shmi quails a little, even as she stands up. She’s not afraid of Hux in the least—Rey can sense that much—but inside, she’s squirming guiltily, her heart slamming. “I was doing everything just like you said, but Delphine wouldn’t leave without Millicent—”

“The cat?” Kylo asks in disbelief. “You went back for the _cat?_ Shmi—”

“We couldn’t just _leave_ her, Papa! And it was only going to take a second,” Shmi babbles, so quickly that the words run together. Behind her, Delphine stands up and edges closer to Hux, sniffling. “But then Millicent ran under the bed, and we were trying to get her, but she wouldn’t come out, and then I heard Daddy coming up the stairs, and it was too late then, so we shut the door, and—” She looks anguished. Her voice wobbles. “I’m sorry, Papa! I’m so sorry! I know I’m supposed to follow the plan, and I didn’t do it—”

By now, Delphine is crying loudly, struggling to hold onto the cat. “I don’t want to leave, Daddy,” she says, between sobs. She presses herself against Hux’s side. “I don’t want you to die—”

“Nobody’s going to die, darling,” Hux tells her, reaching down to stroke her hair with one hand, but she doesn’t seem to hear him.

“She’s going to kill you,” Delphine wails. The cat finally wriggles out of her arms, but doesn’t go far, winding restlessly around her feet and purring in an agitated way.

It hits Rey, suddenly, what they’re talking about. Kylo and Hux have put together some kind of contingency plan—presumably, in case the New Republic government ever catches up with them. They have a system already in place for emergencies, and Rey supposes that showing up at their home like this, completely out of the blue, would count as one.

Earlier, Rey had been shocked by Hux’s invitation. It seemed out of character for him, but now she understands. When they sat down at the table, Hux didn’t realize that the girls were still in the apartment; he’d assumed they were well on their way to some appointed safe place. He’s been drinking and chatting with Rey purely to stall—to keep her here for as long as possible and buy time for the girls to reach their destination, wherever that may be. Up to this point, Hux has been operating under the assumption that Rey is here to murder them all.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Rey feels compelled to say, in the gentle voice she usually reserves for soothing Poe and Fin’s children. She clips her lightsaber onto her belt and raises her empty hands. “I only came here to—”

“You’re a Jedi,” Shmi says hotly. Her face is hard, her cheeks flushed pink. “And Jedi are liars. You’d kill us as soon as look at us.”

Rey looks to Kylo in dismay. “Is that the nonsense you’ve been feeding them?”

“It isn’t nonsense,” Kylo says, scowling, and takes a step closer to Rey. “If the New Republic had known where we are before now, they’d have firebombed the place without blinking—“

“No, you’re thinking of the First Order,” Rey spits. “We don’t murder innocents—”

“Every government murders innocents! Yours just refuses to admit it—”

“That’s enough!” Hux shouts, loudly enough that everyone in the room winces. Looking at him now, Rey sees the shadow of the general—a man who gives commands and expects them to be followed. “Now sit down, both of you, and put the damn lightsabers away! There will be no more swinging lightsabers around inside the house!”

A tense moment passes. Kylo and Hux stare at each other in silence, and something seems to pass between them. Finally, Kylo crosses the short distance to the couch and sits down with a thump, his back straight, looking angry but muted.

Rey’s pulse is still pounding, adrenaline still rushing through her veins, but she recognizes an opportunity to deescalate a situation when she sees it—and she really didn’t come here to fight. She picks up a wooden chair that was knocked over in the struggle and sits, angled so she faces both Kylo and Hux.

“You,” Hux says to Kylo, “entertain our _guest_ for a moment.” Then he looks at Rey, witheringly. “And _you_ —stop terrorizing my children. I’ll be back shortly.”

Rey opens her mouth, affronted—this is the second time tonight that someone’s pulled a weapon on her unprovoked—but Hux has already turned away, effectively dismissing her. He bends so Delphine can put her arms around his neck, picks her up, and then carries her into the next room—not the one where she’d been hiding with her sister, but what Rey assumes is the bedroom that Hux and Kylo share. The cat darts in after them.

When the door clicks shut, Shmi edges toward the couch and takes a seat beside her father. She stares intently at Rey, her eyes dark and unreadable. Kylo is staring at Rey, too, with a look of undisguised fury.

Hux is gone for what feels like an age. Through the closed door, Rey can hear voices—Hux speaking quietly and steadily, Delphine sobbing and hiccupping—but she can’t pick out anything specific. Delphine’s crying begins to taper off, but Hux doesn’t appear.

Eventually, Rey clears her throat and looks at Shmi. “I’m Rey, by the way,” she says, attempting a light tone. “We’ve actually met before. But I don’t suppose you remember. You were only a few days old.” 

Shmi looks faintly disturbed by this information; Kylo looks faintly murderous. Neither of them speak. The tension is unbearable.

At last, Hux emerges into the sitting room. It’s almost funny—Rey had never thought she’d be relieved to see him. He shuts the bedroom door behind him and stands in place, as though waiting for Rey to make a move.

In the end, Rey looks to Shmi again. “I’d like to speak with you for a little while, if you’ll let me. Privately.”

Shmi hesitates. Her shoulders are taut, her hands curled into fists, like she’s primed for a fight—but her expression is clouded, uncertain. She glances at Hux, who says nothing but inclines his head minutely, a permissive gesture. And then she looks to Kylo, who simply tells her, “It’s your decision. Do as you like.”

Another moment passes, and then Shmi nods. Gesturing for Rey to follow her, she slips into the bedroom where she’d been hiding with her sister. Rey shuts the door behind her. 

On either side of the girls’ room is a neatly-made bed, with identical sheets. Two small desks are pushed against the far wall, side by side; above them, a shelf is crammed with holobooks. This must be where the girls do their schoolwork. A few lumpy, colorful cloth dolls are scattered across one bed; they look hand-sewn, and Rey can’t tell if they’re supposed to represent real creatures or imaginary ones. She wonders who made them.

Two lightweight travel bags lie abandoned in the middle of the floor. Rey supposes those bags are always packed and ready, so the girls can leave at a moment’s notice. If Shmi and Delphine hadn’t been sidetracked by the cat, they would’ve been long gone by the time Kylo came home.

Shmi perches on the edge of her own bed, her spine straight, gripping her knees. At least, Rey assumes the bed is hers, based on the painted model starships dangling from the ceiling above it: an Imperial TIE fighter, an X-wing, a few others.

“Your father told me you want to be a pilot,” Rey says, remembering what Hux said about Shmi’s interest.

“I don’t know,” Shmi mutters. She sounds a little embarrassed. “Maybe. I just—I like ships, is all.” She glances up at Rey. “You can sit.”

“Thanks.” Rey goes to sit at one of the desk chairs, a safe distance from the bed, so as not to crowd Shmi. This close, she can feel the Force rippling around Shmi, gently, almost lovingly. It moves through her, as well as around her—the dark and the light. How strange. “You’re strong with the Force,” she comments. “I could tell the first time I ever saw you, when you were a baby. Are you being trained?”

Shmi pulls a sour face, like she thinks that was a stupid question. “My dad’s been teaching me, my whole life,” she says. “I’m going to build my own lightsaber soon. Next year, maybe, if I do well enough. Or the year after.”

“Is that so?” Rey doesn’t let her surprise show on her face. At this rate, Shmi will be fifteen or sixteen by the time she has her own lightsaber—older than most padawans were when they reached that milestone in their training, much older than Kylo had been. A lack of skill or discipline could cause such a delay, but Rey doubts that’s the case with Shmi. She can’t help but wonder if Kylo has been purposefully guiding his daughter through her training at a slower, more deliberate pace. Perhaps he’s trying to amend what he views as an error in his own training. “What do you practice with?”

“Wooden swords at first. And later, Papa built training sabers. He lets me practice with his lightsaber sometimes,” Shmi adds, a hint of pride in her voice. “He says it’s not a good saber for novices, with the cross guard and everything, but I can manage it on my own.”

“That’s impressive,” Rey says. Kylo’s lightsaber is wild, unstable, with a cracked kyber crystal. All things considered, Rey is surprised it’s lasted this long. A moment passes, and she clears her throat. “You were listening to me talk to your father, I bet. You probably know why I’m here.”

Shmi nods reluctantly.

“I’m told that your parents explained the family history to you,” Rey continues. “So you know that I’m your father’s cousin, and I’m your cousin, too. What do you know about your grandmother, Leia?”

“She’s an accomplished tactician,” Shmi says, stiffly. She sounds like she’s repeating a phrase she memorized long ago. “A leader who inspires loyalty. An admirable enemy—that’s what my dad calls her. He says we should respect her abilities, even though her ideas are foolish and her government is doomed to fail again.” 

Oddly enough, that description is much kinder than Rey would’ve expected. “And what does your other father say?”

“That she loved the galaxy more than she loved her family. That she made her choice a long time ago, and she didn’t choose us.”

At first, Rey is unsure of how to respond. Shmi’s assertion—rather, Kylo’s—is not untrue, from a certain perspective. Leia has spent her life caught between her obligations to the galaxy and to her family. Both of them needed her. She could never choose one without sacrificing the other. It’s been a source of great pain for Leia; Rey has seen it with her own eyes. She hopes she never has to know how it feels to lose something she loves while desperately trying to save something else.

“Your grandmother has been forced to make a lot of sacrifices in her life,” Rey says, diplomatically. “More than anyone should have to. She’s been wondering about you, all these years. Worrying about you. She wants to meet you very badly—”

“My grandmother handed me off to strangers,” Shmi says icily. Her mouth is set in a hard line, and all at once, she looks astonishingly like Hux. “I don’t want anything to do with her.”

Rey swallows. At the time, she didn’t agree with Leia’s decision to place Shmi for adoption, but at least she understood the reasoning behind it. “She didn’t make that choice lightly. It was a very complicated situation—which,” Rey adds, before Shmi can protest, “doesn’t make it any less hurtful to you. My own father gave me up when I was a little girl, you know. Abandoned me on a desert planet. I can understand how you must feel.”

Shmi’s dark eyebrows are furrowed. “Your father,” she says slowly. “Luke Skywalker?”

“The very same,” Rey says, nodding. “For a long time, when I was finally reunited with him and learned the truth about what happened, I was upset. I understood he’d done it to keep me safe, but I was very angry with him, anyway. I’d spent years on that planet, alone, when I should’ve been with my family. I didn’t think I’d ever get over it.” She pauses. “And maybe I never did, not entirely. Some things just don’t go away. But I did forgive him, eventually.”

“Why?” Shmi looks genuinely shocked by this, and faintly suspicious, as well—like she thinks Rey is trying to trick her. “You didn’t owe him anything.”

“You’re right—I didn’t. But eventually, I came to realize that he was only trying to do right by me. Abandoning me had hurt him, too.” It had taken Rey a long time to reach that point, a place of understanding. She’s at peace with it now—at peace with Luke, and with herself. “We all do our best, but people make mistakes. I certainly have. So has Leia. And she has regrets.” Rey wants to reach out and touch Shmi’s arm, reassuringly, the way she would with any of Poe and Finn’s children, but she doubts she’d be well-received. “You don’t have to forgive the people who hurt you, Shmi. But sometimes, it helps to think about what you might gain through forgiving someone, versus what you stand to miss out on by staying angry.”

Shmi draws her long legs up onto the bed, curling into herself slightly. One of her hands picks absently at the blanket. “I don’t want to meet her,” she says, glancing up at Rey with dark eyes.

“I know you don’t right now,” Rey says gently. “This is all very sudden. But someday, if you feel differently, you can change your mind. There’s no time limit on family. You and your sister and your father can all—”

Shmi gives Rey a sharp look. “I have two fathers.”

Rey hesitates. “Yes, I know that—”

“You called my dad a murderer,” Shmi goes on, her voice thick. “I heard you. And I know he is. I don’t care.” She has a defiant look on her face, her eyes dark and hard, as if she’s daring Rey to argue. “He’s a monster to you, but he’s my dad.”

With a sharp kind of clarity, Rey recalls the first time she ever set eyes on Shmi, in the makeshift nursery in Leia’s quarters, when the girl had no name. Rey had never seen a human baby before, and she had marveled at how tiny Shmi was. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she looked nothing like Hux. It would’ve been easy to pretend she was someone else’s baby.

When Rey’s curiosity got the better of her and she reached down into the crib, Shmi had grasped her finger with one perfect little hand, and Rey finally felt it—the Force, whispering to her about the secrets in Shmi’s blood.

Even Hux hadn’t known those secrets yet. He didn’t know anything about his daughter then; Shmi was taken from him the moment she was born. Hux had not so much as looked upon her, and yet without her, he was in pain: a steady, throbbing pain that Rey could sense from clear across the base. It had seemed so strange to her then.

“He loves you very much,” Rey says at last, quietly. “I don’t doubt that for a moment. He loved you before he ever saw you, and I imagine he’s been a good father to you. The best he can be, at any rate.”

Shmi looks away, biting her lip, like she can’t bear to meet Rey’s eyes. “We’re going to have to move now, because of you,” she says bitterly. She stands up and goes for the door. “I hope you feel like you got what you came for.”

“Shmi—” Rey tries, but it’s no use.

When Rey follows Shmi back out into the sitting room, she finds Hux and Kylo both watching her grimly from the couch. They’ve probably been conferring urgently the whole time Rey was with Shmi, debating what they ought to do about her.

Shmi doesn’t linger. A single look from Hux, and she slinks into the other bedroom, where Hux had previously deposited Shmi.

The moment the door closes behind her, Kylo is on his feet, his mouth set in a hard line, shoulders squared. “Shmi’s not going anywhere with you,” he says savagely. “Neither is Delphine. And if you think for one instant that I’ll allow you to—”

“I’m not here to take them from you,” Rey cuts across him.

“Then what _are_ you here for?” Hux demands, rising. “What do you really want?”

Rey blinks. “I already told you! I’m here as a favor to Leia—”

Hux’s lip curls in distaste. “Don’t be coy,” he says. “Everybody wants something, and you’re no exception. I know you didn’t wade through the Outer Rim’s foulest shit holes, looking for us, just to _talk._ So what is it? What do I have to give you so you’ll leave?”

For a moment, Rey is taken aback. Even now, he’s not convinced of her intentions. She suspects that he feels unbalanced, like the situation has tipped out of his favor and out of his control. Maybe this is his way of putting things back in order.

In the end, Rey says, “Coming here, my hope was that you’d allow me to arrange for the girls to speak to Leia. But short of that, I’ll settle for a holo.”

“A holo?”

“Of the girls. Something Leia can hold in her hands and look at. Something that came from you,” Rey adds, looking pointedly at Kylo as she says it.

Instantly, Kylo bristles. “She won’t get anything from me.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Hux says wearily. “I know this is a matter of principle, but there’s no need to be so dramatic. It’s just a holo.”

Kylo balks. “Hux—”

But Hux has already slipped into the second bedroom, where Shmi and Delphine disappeared. He returns shortly with a tiny holodisk and presses it into Rey’s hand without comment. The touch of his skin is startling. Hux’s hand is as rough and calloused as hers—and it’s warm. She doesn’t know why she’d expected anything else. He’s flesh and blood, the same as her.

“You have what you came for,” Hux says, stepping back to stand at Kylo’s side. “There’s no reason for you to stay here any longer.”

Despite herself, Rey hesitates. “This might sound strange, coming from me—but I really hope you don’t feel like you have to move planet because of this,” she says. “Shmi mentioned that you might. It would be a shame if the girls had to leave their home.”

Kylo’s eyes gleam menacingly. “If they do, it would be your fault.”

Rey shakes her head, exasperated. “Do you really think I’m interested in destroying your life here?” she asks. “What would be the point? No matter how I may feel about you, I wouldn’t take it out on the girls. And you know Leia would die before telling anyone about this place. Almost fifteen years, and she hasn’t breathed a word about who Shmi really is—or about you, Kylo.”

“For her own sake,” Kylo says, with a dismissive gesture. “She was all but ruined when the galaxy found out that she’s Darth Vader’s daughter. What do you think they’d make of me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Whatever else you are, you’re still her son,” Rey tells him, resolutely. She had expected him to be furious at Leia, even all these years later, but to bump uselessly against his anger like this is maddening. “She believes that. And she’s been protecting all of you, in her own way. I think she’ll be glad to know you have another daughter.”

Kylo doesn’t say anything to that, but his face spasms, as if something sharp has twisted inside of him. His eyes are dark and shiny.

“If she truly cares about what’s best for the girls,” Hux says finally, “she’ll leave us in peace. And so will you.” He gives her a steady look, his eyes like blue glass. “Pretend we’re really dead this time, if you have to. Just stay away.”

Rey’s hand tightens around the holodisk, almost unconsciously. “Thank you for this,” she says to Hux, quietly—a genuine thanks, something she’d never thought she would offer to him. It’s just one more oddity in a long, strange night.

And with that, she leaves.

 

\--

 

When Rey arrives at Leia’s home four days later—a small but well-appointed apartment on Coruscant—it’s C-3PO who greets her at the door. He seems to relish his role in running the household; Threepio is never happier than when he has many small details to manage and a handful of other droids to boss around. Rey listens to his pleasant nattering as he guides her into the parlor.

It’s an airy, elegant room, decorated in what Threepio describes as a classic Alderaanian style. Leia sits beneath the wide window, looking out over the city, which is beginning to glow in the gathering dusk. She’s dressed in a pale green suit, her silvery hair swept up in a knot.

Leia rises gracefully from her seat and opens her arms; Rey melts into her embrace with a happy sigh. It’s been months since the two of them were last in the same part of the galaxy, much less the same room. She’s missed Leia.

In the interest of her mission’s success, Rey had fudged the truth with Hux. Leia did indeed have a health scare last year, one that made her more acutely aware of her own mortality, but she recovered. For a human woman in her seventies, she’s in remarkably good health. However, she prefers not to travel off-planet more than a few times a year—frequent hyperspace jumps, as well as atmospheric entrance and exit, put a physical strain on the body that is not recommended for someone of advanced age.

Hux had assumed Leia was on her deathbed, and Rey allowed him to, hoping he would be more likely to indulge his old enemy if he thought she didn’t have long to live. It was a gamble, but it paid off.

A hundred questions hang between them when they break apart. Rey sent Leia a brief status update from Pacifica 9, but no details. It seemed like the kind of discussion that should be had in person—but now that she’s here, looking at Leia, she scarcely knows where to begin.

“Have a seat,” Leia says at last. “I’ll have Threepio bring us something to drink.”

Rey sinks onto the long window seat while Leia speaks with Threepio, grateful for the chance to gather her thoughts. The view is remarkable. From this far up, the city seems to stretch out forever, and the skylanes look like rivers of light. Before the war, Leia had lived on Hosnian Prime—which, of course, went on to be the second home of hers to be annihilated. Luke talks about the will of the Force, about everything happening for a reason, but sometimes Rey has doubts.

A minute later, Leia joins Rey by the window. She folds her hands together, the very picture of patience and calm—but underneath, Rey can just barely sense the stirrings of anxiety. She’s as apprehensive about this conversation as Rey. Part of her is afraid of what she might hear.

Eventually, Rey says, “They named the baby Shmi.”

Leia’s eyebrows arch. “Shmi?”

“I thought it was an interesting choice, too.” Rey’s not sure what it means, if anything, that Kylo selected a family name. Maybe he just wanted to pay tribute to Darth Vader. She clears her throat. “They got married. They had a second baby—another girl. Delphine. She’s nine. She has a cat.”

“Is she Force-sensitive?”

“They both are. Kylo’s training them, but I’m not sure what that entails.”

Leia nods slowly, as if absorbing the information. “What else?”

“Kylo and Hux have spent the last fourteen years on a rainy moon, repairing speeders out of their own garage, raising their daughters. All the neighbors think they’re ordinary people. The two of them are well-liked, if you can believe it.” Rey pauses, searching for the next words. Her voice is quiet. “I think they’ve loved each other. And they’ve loved the girls.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the holodisk. “Before I left, they gave me this—for you.”

Rey carefully sets the holodisk on the seat between them, and it flickers to life, in three dimensions.

In the silent recording, Delphine and Shmi are seated below a window, watching a rainstorm. Somebody calls to them, and they both look up and smile, again and again. Behind them, rain streaks the window. Rey never noticed before, but as the moment loops, she sees how similar the girls look, the way their eyes and mouths mirror each other when they laugh. It looks like a recent holo—taken within the last year, probably. Shmi’s hair is pulled back into an elaborate, glossy braid. Delphine’s hair is wound up in a complicated-looking knot.

Leia points. “That braiding,” she says softly. “I taught Ben how to do it when he was a boy. I didn’t think he remembered.”

“You taught him to braid hair?” Rey asks.

“It’s Alderaanian,” Leia says, tracing the outline of Shmi’s long, dark hair. The hologram flickers wherever she touches, bending around her finger. “Traditional. A braid for a princess.” A huffing laugh escapes her. When she glances up at Rey, her eyes are damp. “Tell me more.”

“Of course. What do you want to know?”

Leia smiles in a way that’s both happy and sad. “Everything.”

 

\--

 

Rey has traveled across the galaxy more times than she can count, touched down on hundreds of worlds, seen vistas that took her breath away—but of all the places she’s visited, the house on Yavin 4 remains her favorite. For all intents and purposes, Rey lives on the _Falcon,_ like a turtle who takes its home with it wherever it goes, but she knows she’s always welcome here.

Poe grew up in this house; his late mother’s A-wing still rests out back, lovingly maintained. After the war, when Finn and Poe both officially resigned their military commissions, they settled down here to live as an ordinary couple, with no more battles to fight. They’ve added onto the house over the years, as their family grew.

On her way to the front door, Rey passes beneath the gently-swaying branches of the Force tree. It’s in full bloom, summer sunlight filtering through green leaves. Many years ago, near the end of the Galactic Civil War, Luke gave that tree as a gift to Poe’s mother, Shara Bey—one of only two saplings cut from the ancient tree at the heart of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Shara planted the tree in front of house where she lived with her husband and young son, and it’s thrived there ever since.

When Poe first told Rey about the tree, she had laughed, amazed that the two of them should be connected in that way. But then again, maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised—the Force works in mysterious ways. Lately, whenever she’s here, Rey likes to sit beneath the tree to meditate. She always feels centered in the Force when she’s close to the tree, peaceful.

Even from here, Rey can hear the sound of children yelling somewhere around the back, and Finn’s voice, as well. She knocks, and Poe answers the door.

Poe Dameron is one of those infuriating people who get progressively better-looking as they age. Just shy of fifty years old, the spreading silver in his hair and the gentle lines worn into his face make him look distinguished and seasoned, rather than old. “Well, look who decided to show up,” he says, his mouth lifting into that easy smile. “About time.”

She smiles back instinctively. “I’ve been a little busy, in case you hadn’t heard.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Poe says, and pulls her into a hug. When they break apart, he looks her up and down, as though making sure she’s all in one piece. “You just missed lunch, but we can scrounge something up, if you’re hungry.”

“That’s all right, I ate on the ship.”

“Something rehydrated and disgusting, I’ll bet.”

“Not _disgusting_ ,” Rey protests, because she can’t truthfully say her most recent meal wasn’t rehydrated.

He just shakes his head, even as he steps aside and ushers Rey into the house. “I don’t know how you can keep eating that stuff,” he says. “When I got out of the military, I swore off anything tasteless, vacuum-sealed, or nutritionally-optimized. Never again. Only good stuff in this house.”

“I know. The first year you were married, Finn complained that you were purposefully trying to fatten him up.”

“That’s the price of easy living,” Poe says, grinning. “By the way, you’re staying for dinner.”

Laughing, Rey follows him through the house, into the kitchen, which is full of clear sunlight. Plates from lunch are stacked in the sink, and cups are lined up on the counter. In a family of eight, the sheer amount of dishes that have to be washed on a daily basis is staggering; Rey prefers not to think about the laundry. That’s one of the perks of being the designated fun aunt—she gets to enjoy the kids, but doesn’t necessarily have to pick up after them. 

Poe leans back against the kitchen table. It’s bigger than average, to accommodate both the family and the many friends who visit. “Finn told me what happened out there. Pretty wild.” 

“It was… interesting, certainly,” Rey agrees. Then she pauses. “Do you remember when we brought the baby to that house by the orchard?”

“Sure. Nice little Mid-Rim planet. Nice little family, too. It was autumn there when we landed, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Rey can almost see it now: the pretty farm house at the edge of the orchard, the seemingly endless expanse of fruit trees, the distant glimmer of a lake. As they walked up the path to the house, Rey thought it looked like the kind of place she might’ve dreamed up as a girl, when she used to fantasize about her family. And yet, holding the baby in her arms—her helpless, nameless cousin—she couldn’t shake the feeling of apprehension. “It seemed cruel at the time, like we were abandoning her to her fate. When I handed her over, I kept telling myself that I’d see her again someday, when the time was right, and I’d be able to explain everything. I’d be able to make it right. But then I realized that’s exactly what my father thought when he left me on Jakku. There I was, doing the same thing that was done to me and hoping for a better outcome.”

“You weren’t exactly swimming in options,” Poe reminds her. He had placed his hand between Rey’s shoulder blades, she recalls now, as she carefully shifted the baby into the adoptive mother’s arms. Looking back, Rey thinks that reassuring touch was probably the only thing that kept her from bursting into inappropriate tears. Poe has always been so good at identifying what other people need. “We were still fighting a war then.”

“I know that,” Rey says. “And I knew it then. The situation was much bigger than us. But it was foolishness all the same, or maybe arrogance. We make the same mistakes over and over—willfully, almost. It’s the Skywalker family curse or something.”

Poe huffs. “It usually works itself out in the end, though, doesn’t it?”

“Depends on your point of view.”

“Well, then,” Poe says, stretching the syllables out, like he’s mulling something over. “From your point of view, did it work out this time? With Hux’s kid, I mean.”

Rey’s mouth opens, but it’s a moment before she speaks. At the time of the adoption, her greatest fear was that the baby would grow up ignorant of her heritage and catastrophe would ensue. Later on, she worried that Hux and Kylo would raise her to be a weapon. And now, to her endless surprise, it seems that neither of those bleak futures has come to pass.

Shmi knows who she is, and where she comes from, as does her sister—and Rey knows the real value of that. Kylo and Hux have cherished those girls, protected them. They’ve lived peacefully on that little moon, as a family, like some strange, mirrored version of the Damerons. Funny how things work out.

“It could be better, I suppose,” Rey says finally. “But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

Poe studies her for a moment, his eyes dark and warm. “You want to talk about it some more?”

Rey shakes her head. “Not right now,” she says, feeling suddenly weary—from the trip, maybe, or from something else. “I’d rather catch up with you and the kids.”

“What you want, you get,” Poe says, with a sudden smile, and opens the back door.

Outside, Rey can see the kids chasing each other across the thick green grass, in a wash of sunlight. BB-8 is in the thick of things, as usual. Finn is swinging Wileen around in his arms. Nearby, in the shade of a small tree, Gallim appears to be playing some kind of hand-clapping game with the youngest girl, eight-year-old Nofi. Gallim had a difficult life before he chanced upon Finn—the kind of lonely, hardscrabble existence that Rey can relate to—but he seems to be adjusting well to life with his new family.

Sticking his head outside, Poe calls, “Hey, kids, your aunt Rey’s back!”

A small chorus of delighted screams answer him.

Even now, Rey sometimes thinks that this can’t possibly be her life. Growing up on Jakku, she had never dreamed that she’d have something like this—not only blood relatives, but a family of her choosing, who had chosen her in return, and accepted her completely, forever. She never has to worry that she’ll come back one day to find them gone; the Damerons are as sure as the turning of the worlds. She loves them for that, and for everything else.

As the children come barreling into the house, Finn bringing up the rear, Rey smiles.

It’s good to be home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hux makes it sound like he didn’t want to keep the cat, but he absolutely did. he’s the one who named her, after the late, great Millicent (presumed dead following the loss of the Finalizer), who he has privately mourned for the last decade.
> 
> remember when I said this was going to be a four-part series? I lied. in the middle of writing this fic, I was ambushed by an idea for another installment that would bridge some of the gap between Trust Me to Take You Home and Up the Wolves. basically, it would be the story of how Delphine came to be, with a special guest appearance from a character I’ve been dying to write.
> 
> I actually considered putting this story on hold and writing the other one first, but ultimately, I felt that Up the Wolves is a more effective and engaging story if there’s some mystery about what the galaxy’s most dysfunctional family has been up to. (also, I love a good time skip.) I hope you’ll look forward to the new installment! remember to [subscribe to the series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/490429) if you want to get an email letting you know the moment it goes live.
> 
> as always, thank you for reading! hit me up [on tumblr](http://saltandrockets.tumblr.com/) to discuss Skywalker family dynamics. xoxoxo


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